Saab 2013 Annual Report Download - page 46

42 SAAB ANNUAL REPORT 2013
POPULAR TRAINEE PROGRAMME
FOR TOMORROW’S LEADERS
Saab’s customised trainee pro-
gramme targets recent gradu-
ates and young talent with a few
years’ work experience. We are
looking for people who have
ambition as well as the potential
to become future leaders within
the Saab Group. We use a basi-
cally traditional approach that
introduces new employees to
the business so they learn about
its various areas, products and
services. To increase awareness
of what it’s like to work in various
areas, training is conducted
both in Sweden and in other parts of the world. The work is then alter-
nated with courses, lectures and company visits together with other
trainee programme participants.
The 2012 trainee programme gave engineer Emma Berglund a good
start at Saab as well as an exciting and unique traineeship in India.
Today, Emma works as project manager for land and marine radar
systems (EDS).
“One great thing about Saab’s trainee programme is that you’re given
a permanent position right away, which provides a clear focus for
structuring all of the various activities. The programme also includes
many supplementary training courses that are benecial in terms of
building business relationships and relationships with colleagues.”
Saab’s trainee programme is among the most popular1 among appli-
cants. The next programme will commence in the spring of 2014; re-
cruitments were made during the autumn of 2013.
1) TraineeGuiden
Towards greater internationalisation
One key element of our growth strategy is increasing our market
presence, which makes our organisation more international by
expanding our presence in local markets. 20 per cent of our em-
ployees are now outside of Sweden, representing an increase from
2,140 people in 2010 to 2,798 at the close of 2013.
e global nature of our operations is also reected in the
diversity within the company, with around 60 nationalities repre-
sented among our employees.
More female managers
For us, it’s a matter of common sense – being a company that oers
equal opportunities to men and women makes us a more innovative
and protable organisation. Simply put, a gender-equal Saab can per-
form better, and improving gender equality is therefore part of our
strategy for achieving the company’s growth and protability targets.
Our goal is to have at least 30 per cent female managers by the close
of 2015. Parallel eorts are underway to improve the gender balance
in the organisation as a whole, where the current gure is 22 per cent
female employees in total.
Increasing the share of women requires not only the focus of
Group Management – concrete measures and greater awareness
of the target’s importance are also necessary. Possession of the
requisite skills is the decisive factor in all recruitments, but we are
adding a structured process to this that widens the recruitment
pool.
We also place great emphasis on identifying female talent
within our internal talent management process and during the
recruiting process, during which, for instance, at least one woman
is always called in to interview for each vacant managerial posi-
tion. e gender perspective is a natural part of our leadership
development training programmes, and managers are evaluated
on how well they promote workplace equality. ings are slowly
but surely moving forward, and an additional 43 women were
hired for management positions throughout the organisation
during the year. As at the close of 2013, 25.1 per cent of Saab’s
managers are women.
BETTER BUSINESS WITH MORE
WOMEN IN LEADING POSITIONS
Saab’s participation in the year-long Battle of the Numbers (BoN) pro-
ject is based on its conviction that gender equality improves the com-
pany’s performance and competitiveness.
“For Saab, workplace equality isn’t a project – it’s a key component of
our strategy. Companies operate to make money, and gender-equal
companies are more protable. This is a fact and is something I expect
all Saab employees to support and promote – just as they do our other
strategic objectives,” said Håkan Buskhe, Saab’s President & CEO.
Projects like BoN are important for several reasons, including the basic
postulate that measuring something increases signicantly the proba-
bility that action will be taken. Also, Group Management is now placed
in charge of promoting efforts to create workplace equality. In Saab’s
case, focus to date has been on attracting more women to manage-
ment positions. Putting workplace equality high on the agenda is a
wakeup call for many people and serves as an incentive to dismantle
old recruiting structures to make way for new ones.
Ten largecap Swedish companies participated in BoN. Together, these
companies employ nearly 570,000 people and share a belief that they
do good work with gender equality issues – but want to become even
better.
2013 2014 20152012201120102009200820072006
10
15
20
30
25
25%
Target
30%
Trend female managers, %
Trend female employees, %
Trend in percentage of female managers